colonizer

American  

[kol-uh-nahy-zer] / ˈkɒl əˌnaɪ zər /

noun

• colonizers
  plural

1. 1. a nation or government that claims a territory other than its own, forcibly taking control over the population and resources located in that territory and usually sending some of its own people to settle there.

      In the past, whole continents have been appropriated by colonizers such as Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal.

   2. any of the settlers who come from such a nation to live in or help control the territory their government has claimed.

      The Red River was the scene of a major historic battle between European colonizers and Canada’s Indigenous people.

   3. Often Disparaging and Offensive. a descendant of any of these settlers, or any person belonging to their culture and enjoying the advantages of the power structure set up by the colonizing nation.

2. a person who is among the first to settle in an area.

   The initial colonizers of the Arctic were thought to have descended from inhabitants of the forested south.

3. Biology. a species of plant or animal that moves or is transported to a new habitat and seeks to establish itself there.

   Ecologists are interested in why some species are successful colonizers while others are not.

4. Microbiology, Medicine/Medical. a microbe that multiplies in or on another organism, especially one that does so without causing disease or infection, such as certain bacteria in the gut or on the skin of humans.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• colonizers
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of colonizer

First recorded in 1720–30; colonize ( def. ) + -er ¹ ( def. )

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

colonizer colonizers

Powerful new international circuits of credit were built that deepened America’s integration into a British-led global economy and helped pave the way for the young U.S. to leapfrog its former colonizer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2025

“They basically just act as the first pioneer or colonizer species that are able to get a hold on a devastated kind of landscape and start to bring some life back to it.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2023

President Idriss Déby, who was fatally wounded on the battlefield in 2021, tamped down multiple rebellions during his 30-year reign, sometimes with the support of Chad’s former colonizer, France.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 23, 2023

Colonial overtones were hard to escape in the match between another North African nation, Tunisia, and France, in which a former colony defeated its former colonizer, a favorite to win the tournament.

From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2022

There will always be, in emerging nations, an enduring attraction to the ways of the colonizer — I myself was not immune to it.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

Early Portuguese colonizers described those forests as forming a dense tangle, or "maranhão."

From Science Daily ● Sep. 8, 2026

The colonizers, four Chagossians aged 31 to 72, clambered aboard a dinghy and came ashore, waving British and American flags.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026

The Spanish colonizers suppressed this intentional annual brush burning, claiming it was incompatible with agriculture.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 9, 2025

In TV and movies, there are the racist horrors of Lovecraft Country and the moral monstrosity of the body-snatching colonizers in Get Out.

From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2024

To Indigenous peoples, these colonizers sometimes seemed—and often were—incompetent and virtually helpless.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

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